Prower
by shadowstrand
Summary: Sometimes I wish I had never met them. Other times, I know it was inevitable; they had to remind me, teach me about the despicable nature of myself. Most times, it's too painful to think about them.
1. The Jailkeep

Mobians are, in general, a fairly human kind of species, or alien, or however it is you can put it. But in the same way nature still keeps her claws dug into people, pushing in a secret, deep desire to be the alpha of the tribe. Intelligence has to have a purpose, and the purpose of everything in nature is to make the being the best.

Of course, society trumps species, and in the same way that we did, most Mobians weren't very animal-like. Nature was discouraged in that respect. But there are exceptions, and I suppose my home- my tribe, we called it- was one of them.

I don't know how I developed the morals I have, but I did. I suppose it had something to do with being the jailer's son- you'd think that would make me more biased, but the Arctic Fox tribe captured and held a lot of people. A lot of innocents.

During my time of boyhood, doing chores or cleaning o coming with my father to work- the prisoners sometimes talked to me. That's probably where it started. In a world of hateful mobs, they found comfort in the little boy who cleaned the floors once a week. In talking to him or just watching him. Either way, I learned a little about species and how the world worked out there. And I learned their ways of right and wrong. To myself, being young and alone, I would dream about being a hero. I wanted to be famous, and upstage a rebellion against the authorities that held us here, and go into the world where everyone was equal and people were perfect. I wanted my name to be one that brought an image of a great warrior, a fighter for justice and peace. It was my biggest desire that Miles would be the person who led the Arctic Foxes out of their terrible world.

The Tribe wasn't a bad place, not the place the prisoners saw and my childhood self saw. We had love and morals and happiness, we had justice and courts, we had technology. But there was always the bitter taste of prejudice. Many had not seen any other type of Mobian. To them, any non-fox was a strange, different animals. No more than the flickies that resided in the forest that bordered the tribe's grounds. In the end, I shut my mouth, kept my head down and ended up with a cushy job of patrolling the jail, thanks to my father.

I didn't talk to the prisoners. I was blank and silent, emotionless. In the end, I downgraded them to my prisoners and not people. I felt guilty. Horribly guilty. But the years had taught me that a painful end awaited me if I spoke too loudly about my opinion. I had witnessed that many times, but I think that Prower left the biggest impression of that.

One day my father had brought in someone. I didn't know what he had been persecuted for. I never asked. I found out later, but that day all I noticed was that it was a fox.

Oh, nothing like the foxes I'd grown around. As a contrast to the white, lightly tinted colours of my tribe, he was red. A deep burnt-orange red that sharply went to white. He looked...not sly, but cunning. Intelligent. The sharp angles of his face and muzzle gave that impression, but it was his eyes that confirmed it. Framed by red everywhere but where a strip of white came up from his muzzle and ended in a small cow's lick that he constantly fixed into place, even in prison; his eyes glinted with bravado and ego.

The prisoners usually had reactions from jeering to sobbing to blank silence. He would usually stare out of the barred window, and he looked...almost content. It was disturbingly strange. It wasn't till later, when I learned that he had come with a companion, that I actually brought myself to think about him.

I was told that he had been arrested with a lizard who had sneaked in with him, although I didn't initially know why. The fox had remained still, but the lizard had drawn a weapon and injured one of the guards on patrol. I spoke to Prower for the first time after his friend had been executed.

"Did they kill him?"

I jumped. The fox had almost always remained in complete silence, and he was watching not the window but me. He looked urgent, almost scared, staring at me with angry eyes. "My friend. Did they kill him? Is he here?"

In a moment of weakness, I suppose I must have looked sad, because his face softened slightly. "Please. Did they..."

"I'm sorry..." my voice caught a little, and I quickly composed myself, but he'd seen it. My pity. "Yes, the prisoner was...executed earlier."

He nodded. He didn't looked shocked, just a little sad. I did my rounds again, and after a while of the customary night patrol silence, his voice broke it as he continued to speak.

"Your name is Miles. The old man, the head guy, called you that. Miles."

I was silent.

"If you don't correct me," he continued, sounding almost amused, "I'll just keep calling you that. Miles."

"Yes." I brushed a lock of fur, white with an icy tint like the rest of me, out of my eye.

"Hah."

I was about to continue walking, perturbed by his casual mood.

"You're not going to ask me my name? How rude." he voice, his way of movement, everything dripped with bravado. "C'mon, Miles."

I looked at him.

"I take that as a questioning glance. I'm Prower. Soro Prower."

" Zorro?" I indulged myself in a skeptical jeer.

"Soro." he said impatiently, probably having been teased for that before. "Ah, just call me Prower, would you, Jailkeep'?"

"It's Miles."

I blinked, realized who and where I was, and walked away. I tried not to think about Prower, and I almost succeeded. My patrol was daily, at night. I think I actually believed that I had shaken him from my mind when, on realizing I had dropped a coin and walking back, when I saw him holding hands with the girl from the tribe. Karia.


	2. The Prisoner

It took me a little while, a few years of adulthood, to learn exactly why the "Tribe" was the way it was. I assumed that, as a naive teenager and young adult, that the laws of not leaving and encouraged hatred were the doings of some evil dictator. An antagonist to be hunted down, reguarded as a supervillain of the past for his injustice and power-mad actions. Even as I grew intelligent enough to learn that my supervillain was an elected council, I assumed that there must be some kind of driving evil behind it, some corruption. It took me a while, but eventually I realized that the cruelty and corruption could not be pinned on a scapegoat fictional enemy. The foxes didn't want my justice. They didn't want to leave. I was the villain in this mindset, and the conflicting worlds turned me into a passive observer. There was no power-mad dictator, only old and distorted morals guarded and preserved by the fences that enclosed us from the outside world. Outsiders were arrested on trespassing and residents punished for trying to leave. Not because someone stay powerful but for the good of the people. They _deserved_ punishment.

I didn't know very much about Karia then. I knew she lived in the tribe. I knew she was fairly young, and obviously there was nothing spectacularly noticeable about her because I knew absolutely nothing else reguarding her whatsoever. She was, however, someone I could allow myself to view as a person. At a fellow snow-white arctic fox, my 'jailkeep' facade dropped. And so did my jaw, as it happened.

She looked back at me, too stunned to move. Fearfully. Guiltily, almost. Prower looked at me through the bars but didn't let go of her hand. He squeezed it reassuringly, and looked at me with a grin that almost covered up the desperation in his face.

"Miles!" he said in greeting. "Glad you could make it. Three's a crowd."

The fact he trusted me, more than anything else, kept me from running and informing the words came to me for a reply, so I spluttered. Karia still looked terrified, and she looked away in shame. _Shame_. My own naive feeling of justice- oh, how stupid I was back then, young and innocent!- drove me, at last, to break the law.

"This is why you were arrested."

"I'd been coming here for months too," Prower answered, with comical scorn to the officials. "Shocking that nobody noticed."

"_Months_?" I was back to spluttering, and looked to Karia for a solution to my puzzlement.

"Please," her voice trembled, barely a whisper. "Please...you can't...you c-can't..."

"I won't." I said simply. "I didn't see anything. Next time, I might." I didn't know if it was a threat or a gift. I suppose it was both.

At any rate, it was a lie; I did see next few months were quiet, and not in a pleasant way. The calm before the storm. Every night, she would come, and sometimes I would see them. Through the bars of the cage, they talked and they touched each other's hands, desperate to be able to hold each other for real but separated. I felt sorry for them. The bars were too closely together for them to kiss. I never said anything. I never looked for too long. A passerby would think that I hadn't noticed them and sometimes, I sorely wish I hadn't. I would hear them talk. Not serious, desperate conversations of romance and death and justice, but playful exchanges.

"Darlin', it's unfortunate that we're separated by the door..."

"I know." she'd whisper.

"Because let me tell you, I am _mad_ at dancing. I bet you are too."

"D-dancing? I couldn't dance."

"Always shy, aren'cha, honey? I bet you're fantastic. Anyone could be fantastic with me as their partner."

She would laugh. It sounded at first like he treated her as below him, but slowly I realized he didn't. That was how he just was, and beneath it, he loved her. He loved her in a way that he could not make her into some kind of adoration statue nor take her for granted. She made him happy. So happy that, underground with a sociopath jailkeeper as the closest thing to a friend and with a trial awaiting him, he stayed strong. He was that strong, I realized. Enough to hold off breaking point for a long, long time. It occurred to me that, without her, he probably wouldn't. He could. But he wouldn't try. His freedom and his friends meant a lot to him, but not enough to keep him away from Karia.

The prison wasn't a building but a basement. It was partly underground. The barred windows, which were high up from down there, were the point where the ground ended and air begun. Light, but no means of contacting anyone above ground.I had known this place for as long as I could remember. My father died in those months, but he had never really been around. I had never known him very well. The jail had raised me. His death saddened me briefly, but my older brother took his place and nothing changed at all.

I knew trouble was brewing. The couple was a time bomb. Their love could only end in heartbreak, and they knew it. But it was so much. So beautiful. I think that, if they had not stayed together, they would have died that would have been for the best. Not for them. But for Miles. For me. Perhaps my life could have continued without the heavy clouds of guilt. Perhaps their love could have been, to me, a martyr for justice. Perhaps their memories would have given me anger and strength, and not the piercing stab of self-hatred it does.

I started to break in two that night when, as I approached them, they were too engrossed in their own interactions to pay attention to me. Prower's bare, red-furred hand was pressed out of the bars and against her stomach, and for once he was devoid of bravado. He looked sad. So, so sad.

I suddenly begun to take in things. The enhanced curves of Karia's stomach and chest. The months of them secretly being in love. Forgetting who and where I was, I ran to them. Too shocked, too grieved, for speech. They understood, and the three of us simply stood there seemed that this little love story was not of Karia and Prower, but of a third person. And that person was not me.

"No." I said simply. They looked at me, pained.

"_No._" I was whispering now, in an attempt not to scream. Prower pulled his hand back in. Karia left.

I sat next to Prower's cell and we didn't say anything for a while."Do you think I would be a good father, Miles? If things were different?"

I was silent.

"This aren't different." I said at last, and started to leave.

"Perhaps they will be."

I looked back. His dark eyes reflected light in the shading, and they glowed an angry red because of it. "Perhaps they still can be, Miles."

I did not try to keep my dignity. The sheer unwillingness of this existing overcame me, and I ran.


	3. The Criminal

I was grateful for the few hours I had before I had to return to my night shift at that prison. The idea of Prower- free and in love and escaping his certain death with a life of fatherhood ahead of him- leaving it was something that I wanted badly for him. For him and Karia. But it was something I deeply dreaded for me.

There are obstacles involved in escaping somewhere that you have been trapped in. One is to get out of the place you're being confined in, and another is getting past the person who put you there. I knew the prison well, and without technology- technology which even Karia couldn't get, let alone Prower- the thick metal bars wouldn't budge without a key. A key which I had on me at all times, every midnight. I feverishly hoped that Prower would somehow slip out of his cell and escape with his wits with Karia as his only ally, but I knew it was impossible and so did he. There was one way Prower would walk past those bars and, inevitably, I was involved.

I wish that I had simply refused to Prower's plan, if you could call it a plan. The prison was small, and on a night where he was its only inmate, I walked towards the stretch of cell doors to find a petite white figure curled delicately into a corner.

"Karia," I said blankly. She stared at me, her sky-blue eyes fearful and wary, even if I think she might have trusted me. If I had thought about it, her relationship with Prower perplexed me. She was everything he was not; timid and quiet, modest, all too aware of the consequences capture would bring. I talked to Prower more than her, and I had never contacted Karia above the confines of the prison, but I think that she understood me far better than he did. The doubt that your own opinions will bring to you in a life of people who would reject you if they knew you had them. We had never known freedom like Prower did.

The sight of her disheartened me. She was in the later stages of pregnancy now- I wondered how she had been concealing the fact she carried the child of a prisoner below the ground- but the curves of her stomach did little to hide her small bones and the delicate way she carried herself. Softly. Gracefully. Her fur was pure white, clean and untainted, and she gave the impression that she were made of porcelain. Fragile.

I walked past her, and it was once I passed Prower that I learned the reason for her fearful look.

"Miles," he said urgently. "It's time."

"Time?" I echoed stupidly.

"Time for Karia to give birth soon. Time for us to become parents. Which I will do!" he spoke with the same lightness he always did. He didn't need to say any more, even if he did. I almost felt it, a burden of responsibility and a feeling of being torn in two, forming in my chest and rising until it became so heavy it dropped onto my shoulders. "And I need your help to do it."

"My help..." I was so idiotic, so naive that the idea actually excited me slightly. To rebel. To do what I had dreamed of so much in my childhood.

"Miles." he was serious now, something strange and rare to see Prower be. "You know what will happen. And what's at stake. If you could...actually do this..."

He was lost for words.

"I know."

"Hey, maybe if you did-" His character, it seemed, had restored itself into his voice, "We could have you be a godfather."

We both shared a nervous laugh at that. As if there were any chance we could remain in contact. Or there were any chance that I would remain unpunished.

"When?" I asked, too afraid to voice anything more.

"Now."

That shocked me, but before I could allow myself to think too much about it, I shakily pressed the key into its keyhole and twisted. The door swung open.

Prower, after months of confinement, seemed temporarily dazed at leaving this tiny room which he had never left in countless days. He bit his lip, hesitated, and ran. He was nimble; faster than I would have thought. He moved with surprising silence and grace, more like he were swimming rather than running. I watched him leave for a few seconds, and then he was gone, a second sound of footsteps starting to echo his own. Karia.

I suppose that was the moment when it happened. When my tearing in two stopped, and I chose one side between my life and my sense of justice. Those few seconds I had left to run after to them, call for them to stop or attack them or do something that wouldn't have left me in the guilt-haunted life I live now. If they escaped on my shift, it was obvious that I wouldn't be fairly tried. If not for aiding them escape, I would be punished for carelessness. There was little technology in the Tribe and it came only from Outside. Prower's world. But there was some, a rare few pieces of that mysterious tangle of wires and parts that nobody understood. Some of it was in my prison.

The alarm could be deactivated in time for me to leave with the key. The key, the only copy of which hung from my belt. I took it, dropped it and crushed its frail machinery under my shoe. As the rings pulsed out from all around me, rousing the civilians and the tribe's officials from everywhere, I knew that I wouldn't need it. I suppose they would believe I'd forgotten the alarm, and as much as it shamed me, that was probably what I would let them believe.

For a few seconds, I genuinely let myself think they had a chance of escaping pursuit, but then I heard a few familiar voices. Screaming. Snarling. The sound of impact, and then sobbing.

That was the talk of the town for the next few days. The convict who had tried to escape with his secret lover. He had stolen the jailkeeper's key, sneaked past him, but was caught by the alarm. He and the girl were sentenced execution. Good riddance, people replied, shaking their heads; dangerous to have someone like that here. And the girl, Karia I think her name was, she supports criminals. People from the Outside.

Nobody mentioned me.


	4. The Hero

I didn't deserve to be liked by them. I didn't deserve their company, or their words, no less their gratitude. But if it taught me anything, I learned from the incident what I truly was. A thief. A gluttonous, indulged thief of their trust and their secrets. Of all the painful moments I experienced, that was the worst; sitting outside the cell of the two convicts, waiting for execution, and being thanked.

"At least we'll go out with a bang."

Karia, for all her cowardice usually, had dropped hope entirely. For once, Prower and her did not make a yin-yang balance but a full circle of energy and bravery. She and her partner didn't seem to fear death any more, but they did fear for the harm of a single individual.

Nobody had checked on them but me, although there was no chance of their escape; people were on high alert, curious and watching. So I was the first but them to see him, and the sight of him broke my heart more than the death of those two might have. Something so innocent and new and pure, yet instantly doomed. If the Tribe saw him, he was sure to be killed. Nobody would have mercy on him. They might do, on a simple child, but this was not a baby that the authorities nor anyone else under them would ever accept.

He wasn't red or white like his parents but a strange, unique orange. His eyes were like his mother's- blue and bright and it gave the little fox the image of innocence. All these factors were in his favour of being spared, but there was one thing, one mutation that would surely have him killed.

A mutation.

The child had a second tail.

I swallowed, suddenly speechless at this child- this child with a life ahead of him and no sin- who I had condemned to death. I inhaled, tried to speak, and failed; I pushed my hand in through the bars and he clutched it with a tiny white one of his own.

I managed to summon words away from the guilt. "What's his name?"

"He doesn't have one," said Karia softly. "I don't know if we have time."

Prower was enchanted by this new cub, too intoxicated with love to be afraid, but when he pushed his face up to the door and looked at me, he still burned with resolve. Brighter than ever. "You've done far too much, Miles. I don't know how I can possibly ask you for more, but..."

But. He left the word hanging. He could not die happily unless he knew this child wouldn't follow him. And he also knew that nobody would take pity on his son, nobody but me.

Or that was what he thought.

I unlocked the door. The three stood together for one last time, one moment to be a family, and then passed me the two-tailed cub. He began to whimper, unhappy at being separated from them and into the hands of this strange new person.

I looked at him, and then back up. It was night.

"Goodbye." Prower gave me a grin, still strong. Amazingly so. Karia smiled with him, I left the door open for a moment. "And thank you. For everything."

I was silent, and I shut the door softly.

"Don't thank me," I replied quietly, and turned away. The child was small enough to conceal, and the tribe was empty enough at this hour. Enough to sneak him out of the prison.

I would be persecuted. I knew that much. Perhaps, if I tried, I could leave, but where would I go? Who knew where this tribe was in the middle of the world- how big was the world, even? The patch of land was the only thing I had ever known.

Growing up among innocent outsiders was maybe something of me, but I wasn't an outsider.

I thought I was different, but I never was.

The world outside scared me.

I saw something, though. A chance to...do something, something to change this. I had dreamed of leading the tribe into justice, and I had convinced myself otherwise when I grew up. But my childhood and my adulthood swirled, and the world changed with it. I saw the collective evil society, but I saw all the innocent people within it. The innocent people who were distorted, but not enough to condemn a child.

But distorted enough to condemn a mutated one.

I stared down at the baby in my arms. It was raining, storming, but he seemed more comfortable with me. I had made my way to the edge of the tribe, by the weak fence that didn't prevent anybody from escaping yet was passed by nobody. I could leave now, perhaps, with the child, but then what? If I left, I might survive; yet my world and my life were contained inside the walls, and my morals were too closely knit to them for me to break away. Several forces tried to influence me. One was a recognition that I might, just might be able to turn the Tribe around.

My childhood had been based on that. My dream was that one day, Miles would be the one who united the Tribe with the world. Miles, who fought for justice. Miles, who was destined to change the world for the good.

I cradled the child closer and whispered to him.

"Your name is Miles now."

He looked up at me. Of course he was too young to understand, yet I could have sworn he was listening.

"I always wanted Miles to be associated with something good and pure."

His two tails wrapped around my arm and I begun to lower to the ground, strangely filled with dread that was too old for him, too old for a child to feel. Fear that no cub should have.

"I have no use for it any more."

I lifted up the fence, pushed him under it, and dropped it again. He looked at me, and there was a flash of lightning. He waited, wondering why he had been left here.

"I'm sorry." I said and turned around, leaving the child alone in the rain. I kept going, but there was no obstacle for a while, and when I looked back- maybe hoping that I would stop, run back, and take him back to me, he was gone. He had disappeared into the forest, and I hoped his death would be a quick one.

Karia and Prower died happy. I didn't go to see them; how could I? I had ruined their future and their life, I had killed their child and their freedom. Sometimes I tell myself that I wanted them to die thinking that all was well, to die at peace. Other times, I am unable to justify what I did.

The tribe was shocked when the news spread. The couple had a child. A child, only a few days old. A normal child. Its father was an outsider, but it was nothing. It was too new, too untainted.

And the authorities had taken the child and killed it.

Anger grew. People questioned the rights of it. Slowly, painfully, a doubt begun to grow. If this was wrong, what else was? The Tribe dragged the fence open, and one by one begun to disintegrate. First it was a few who left to see the Outside, then those who went to join them, and people came back with newcomers who had been never seen before. It took years, yet it was also lightning fast. The dead child was the incentive, and the Tribe collapsed into a dead village where evil used to live.

I had played a part in it, certainly. And Miles was the name of the one who brought justice to the people. I have no name now, I am just the one who did it. The one who crossed the line and committed the sin. People don't know it was me, but that didn't matter. I did.

Sometimes I walk into the cell where they were and I stay there, hoping to waste away eventually, suffer the same fate as their child did. But righteousness abandons me as it always does, and I stop pretending that I can make the right decision. I leave, I eat and drink again, and then I come back. I cannot face the world outside. The others moved on and accepted it, became a part of it- the prisoners gave me a glimpse and a part of it, yet I cling onto the last remainder of the tribe that lives inside me. Evil was not in corruption or in morals. Perhaps it was committed the way I did it. Wanting to change the world, but too scared of the result. The buildings were frail and old-fashioned, yet the prison was the only sturdy place left. Here, I am left. In the last remaining part of the Tribe and I am the last member. Some days I hope to change myself and leave, but inwardly I know I never can. I am chained to this place by the Prowers, and forbidden to leave by the past. I wait now, although I don't know why. Perhaps to finally repent. Or perhaps to see Karia and Prower, and let them know the truth. So I can die the demon that I am.

_He watches his little brother with concern. He has entered the workshop for a night sheltered from the storm, for a change, to find him asleep on his makeshift little bed, although hardly soundly. He tosses as if he has a fever, delirious, sweating and whimpering with pain or misery. He is frozen for a second, but eventually the hedgehog reaches over and gives him a shake. The yellow little fox gasps, wakes up, and sits stiffly for a moment._

_"Tails?" he asks softly. Light blue eyes stare at him in terror for a second, before relaxing slightly, and he realizes that the eight-year-old is crying. "What happened?"_

_The vulpine slips onto his feet but almost falls, and the teenager catches him. At his touch, he bursts into fresh tears, acting his age for once in the prodigy's lifetime._

_Sonic just lets him for a little while, holding his little adoptive sibling for as long as he needs to. Finally Tails lets go, and stares out at the rain pounding the windows._

_"I remembered something," he says shakily. The lightning flashes, and with it the root of the fear it always brings is refreshed; a fence, a silhouette backlit by its light, and then the figure turns and walks away._

_"Huh? You remembered something?"_

_Tails gets up, and walks towards the glass. Placing a hand on it, he collects himself after the rather embarrassing outburst, and finally speaks firmly. "I have to know."_

_"Know? Know what?"_

_Sonic stands up and walks a little behind him, surprised to see such resolve on his friend's usually mild face._

_"What happened."_

_"...what...happened?"_

_"What happened before." The kid's eyes narrow. "I have to know what happened to them. My parents."_


End file.
